Clarabell
by Belledonner
Summary: Alphonse is dead. Edward turns addicted to the gate, transmuting his own body to feel the flush of power and to see the his little brothers body slumped against the gate. Although he can no longer remember why he dose it, nor why the body is so important.
1. Chapter 1

AN: hey all, this is yet another storie i will start and hopefully finish!

if you like it please feel free to review, i will reply to everyone's comments and make sure everyone feels loved!

so please R&R!!! cause if you dont theres not gonna be any more chaps to read!

DISCLAIMER: they own the neighborhood, i just rent the house.

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_**What is the use in the stone once the creator has everything he ever desired? It is pointless without a task, useless without a purpose; when left unguided turns unpredictable. Becomes lost.**_

At first it was just the rebel in him. His desire to do everything he could to get his own with the gate that had taken everything.

But then he forgot his purpose.

Then it was just her.

And still he couldn't explain it;

They had met at Alphonse's funeral. Alphonse, he could still remember that name, that was worth something, even if he could no longer remember his own.

Clarabell called him Asha. Asha Jay. He couldn't remember why, but there was a reason. It still didn't seem to fit.

The funeral: It seemed a morbid place for a meeting perhaps, but then again Asha didn't remember ever witnessing it, it didn't feel like the thing he would do anyway; not that he would remember if he had. He knew there was no point for a funeral simply to honer ones body after their very essence had already left the decomposing corps, or in this case empty metal casing. He wasn't sure why, but there was no flesh body in his mind, and it connected with the memories that he tried not to think about; the only ones left clear and untouched by the gate. So he left that question to fester in his mind, so he wouldn't have to relive those terrible things that must have happened to him.

So instead of the pew in his place by a blond haired girl who's face blurred with yellow and silver in his few memories, he was outside with the wind tearing at his hair and the cold biting at his flesh. And suddenly she was there, Clarabell, she simply stated that it was funny to be holding a funeral for a suit of armor, especially one charged with so much death energy. She had an odd look in her miss-matched eyes as she said it, not mocking but almost as if wistful just to be in the presence of such a great and meaningful death, and in the presence of he who caused it.

And strangely, he wasn't repulsed. He was different, so was she. They could relate.

He could remember that, the day he met Clarabell. The day he must have left his home, but he couldn't remember that.

Clarabell.

He didn't understand her, but he didn't need to; she needed him to help her survive. She called herself a junkie- addicted to the energy and the thrill of the gate. He thought he might be a junkie too, but it wasn't the same, she did it for the thrill alone; he did it for something he couldn't remember.

It started small; alchemical transmutations -the ultimate taboo, Clara called it, but Asha couldn't remember why- to themselves and a few animals, but slowly it progressed until they were at the gate asking so much and not giving a damn what the cost. Breaking every rule. And the gate did nothing but slowly deteriorate the lives that they offered more and more frequently.

And still there was a reason he was there at the foot of the gate, again and again; the young man slumped against the gate entrance, just out of reach of the black tendrils that sucked the light out of the air. There was something important about this particluar body, more important than his own now more a mixture of beast and man.

The body was slack and lifeless, the blood gone from his lips and dirty blond hair and nails grown long, greasy and uncut. Still sitting there, for an eternity more, always growing old without anyone to witness his age, though nor could he himself, as the body was no more than a doll; a drooling body without a soul to guide it to the mortal plains. The owners soul was inside the gate his body leaned forever against. His essence was gone, but Asha still wished to see his face.

Damn the costs.

There was vague memories joining this soulless body to the armor and the name...Alphonse. So he kept coming to the gate. Occasionally to glimpse the hushed voices that sounded so familiar yet so forgotten it frightened him as they came whispering from the inky depths of the writhing gate.

They didn't matter. Not any more.

Asha didn't care, Clarabell had stopped eating after the cat eyes, she was too thin. But she complained to him when he asked after her health, saying only that the gate would just take the meal from her stomach if she ate.

He had come round to see her way of thinking, to let the gate rule his mind and body. But still, something was withheld from their acts within himself, something he didn't want to lose, even after the gate had asked for his most preshious memories -witch he had gladly given as the price for scales that skated over his body from the snake Clarabell had given him as a gift for the day he started forgetting-.

After a while the body beside the gate became anonymous, the memories ripped from his mind, the mind who cared for it the most. All he knew was that he had to keep returning to the gate to see it, even if the act itself no longer held any meaning.

It was a shame, that's what everyone said, that he would fall to such 'depravity' when he could have been so powerful. But Asha didn't care, couldn't see how their opinion could matter. he couldn't remember how.

All he remembered was that nobody needed him any more. And that Clarabell would die without him, surly waste away without him to force the food down her throat and cocer he into a bed once in a while. She was too thin.

_Like that old saying..._Edward thought to himself as he laid down the components in an array he had designed, Clarabell wanted ivory spiked ears this time, _what is the use of a stone once the owner has all he needs?... I wish I could remember the rest of it. Clara might like a stone... pretty with the green ones in her stomach..._


	2. Chapter 2

AN: enjoy work that is mine with charecters that are not!

xxx belle

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Roy Mustangs office was in its usual state of disorder, stacks of paperwork or desks, threatening to topple. The tedious, long hours of the monotony work that required, after so much boring reading, a simple signature.

There was little to distract him, the boring work sometimes lulling him into drowsy stare, Of which he always realized he was staring at the only picture on his desk, and suppressed he painful thoughts that came to mind and continued his work with more gusto than it was due.

None of the files came to eye personally, he never noticed the warrant form in the same pale folder as all the rest.

A form to investigate an are where apparent screams had been hear along with bright lights and crackling sounds, the obvious signs of a transmutation.

Nothing out of the ordinarily.

Except one difference. There was a bunch of white lilies on a empty desk in the corner. The desk was always empty, bear save the carvings of complex array and comical drawings craved into its surface.

Today was the anniversary of Edwards disappearance, Four years ago.

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"Asha, is the array ready yet?" a voice husked behind him, soft breath smelling of rot as it stirred the short spikes of hair at his neck.

"Yes, I think it is ready." he said, just as softly, as though not to disrupt the dreamy air that surrounded the woman at his back.

"Good, the pull is getting stronger; I don't think I could have held out much longer anyway." Clara said as she slid into his view, gliding on bare feet that looked far to frail against the cold stone beneath them and the heavy velvet of her skirts.

He didn't say a word in reply, he knew of what she spoke; the addiction. He saw it become worse since he had arrived here, growing from simple thrill to something she could not live without. He himself could feel the pull, but for a different, forgotten reason.

She sat across the wide circle from him, face pale as the moonlight caught on the green stones embedded in her skin, littered in a spiraling decent from just beneath her left eye to the tip of her thumb. He had put them there when she had asked, along with the eyes, so large on her face, not quite human. One was a dark purple, so deep in it's nadir it looked black- barely distinguishable from the slit iris. The other was a dazzling blue-gray, so clear it appeared to be made of fine glass or crystal, but watery like cut ice, a gaze hard to keep without looking away. They looked for all the world to be cat eyes, but they both knew the truth.

"It's pretty," she muttered, one hand snaking out to stroke the white outline of the curling array, long sharp nails caressing lovingly over the source of power she was so bound too.

"Yes, it is. But I don't know how I made it." _I don't remember how to draw them, but I still do. _Asha thought, she couldn't explain it anymore than he could. How he knew the alchemy before he drew it, how he already knew how to circulate the energy, how to design the most complex arrays without a second thought, and still don't know how he knew.

"That doesn't mater now." she said, reaching across the stone to grasp a plaid bad that held shards of ivory. She placed them carefully on her lap as he sat in the center of the array, each piece sharp enough to slice the skin of her fingers as easily as a knife slicing through butter. "it matters that you have such a glorious gift, it matters not how you know the things that bring us what we desire."

Inwardly he sighed, Asha knew full well Clarabell's envy of his talent with alchemy. But she was glad enough to take what he offered. His transmutations made her happy, and she in turn soothed the ache of loneliness that had embedded in his soul since he could remember.

He clapped, circulating the energy that thrummed through his body like a swarm of insects looking for escape. His palms fell down to the chalked outline that circled the swirling array, they did not match; just as Clarabell's eyes did not. But he spared this barely a moments thought before concentrating on the task at hand.

Dingy blue light flared up around them, cocooning Clara in swaths of wind and color. The blue, he remembered, used to be a pure, clear crystal aqua. But now it was a dull, dirty color, tainted by the tendrils of gray and olive that spun around the blue and turned it dark and polluted. The energy itself felt greasy and oily as it left his body, leaving behind an echo of the feeling, the residue of the foul energy. Something that no matter how hard he tried, would not wash away.

The world surrounding them washed white, slowly draining the color till there was nothing but bright white light encroaching across an open plain that stretched further than even Clara's eyes could see.

"You know what we are here for, gate." Asha said towards the hulking mass of stone, he was always the one to do the talking, Clara did not have 'the right blood', as she called it.

True enough though, the arrays never worked when they mixed _her_ blood with the chalk dust to draw the arrays. But it never failed with his.

The ivory spikes drifted free from the grasp of Clarabell, cutting her skin as they slid from the vice like grip. She didn't flinch, her face a mask of pure ecstasy, the air around her flowing vibrant with the energy she so loved.

_If you would pay the price?_

Th ominous voice boomed into his head, a thousand tenors melting into the monotone sentence that screamed directly into his mind.

_Always._ He answered, the same word as always tumbling through his empty mind.

Clara convulsed. Asha forgot.

Edward disappeared.


End file.
